How to Tell Whether a Buyer Is Actually Going to Move

How to tell whether a buyer is actually going to move

Saturday morning, four houses, eighty miles on the car, and they liked the third one enough to walk it twice. You get home at two and write the notes up while it is fresh, and you already know which one they will ask to see again. The couple in the passenger seats is the same couple you drove around in April.

They are not moving this year. You have known that since the second Saturday.

Want to move is not have to move

Every book of business holds both, and they look identical from the driver's seat.

A have-to-move buyer has a date attached to them. A lease that ends, a job that starts, a house already under contract, a third kid arriving into a two bedroom. Something outside the conversation is going to force a decision whether they enjoy the process or not.

A want-to-move buyer has a feeling attached to them. The current place is getting old, the yard is small, the kitchen is dated, and it would be nice. Feelings are real and I am not dismissing them. They just do not close, and they do not hold a date.

Both of them walk the house twice. Both of them text you on Sunday night. The difference only shows up at the moment somebody has to sign something, which is exactly where the want-to-move buyer goes silent and asks to see three more.

Where you give your attention is what produces the results you get. Not who you like the most, not who called first, not who is easiest to be around. Who gets the Saturday.

And the want-to-move buyer is usually the more pleasant of the two. They are never in a rush, so they are never short with you. They have time to look at the listings you send, they answer within the hour, and they tell you the house was beautiful. The have-to-move buyer is stressed, terse and occasionally difficult, because something is actually at stake for them. Left alone, a calendar fills itself with the pleasant one.

You cannot argue somebody into moving

When a buyer tells you they are waiting for rates, waiting for spring, waiting to see what happens, the instinct is to counter it. You have the numbers. You can show them what waiting cost the last three people who waited.

Do not bother. You will be making somebody wrong about a decision they are already convinced of, and nobody changes their mind while being corrected. It is the same as trying to move a person across the political aisle at a dinner table. You will not do it, and you will spend the whole meal trying.

Arguing a buyer into urgency and arguing a seller into a price are the same move, and they fail for the same reason. Motivation belongs to them. It is not something you install.

What you can do is ask what would have to be true for them to move, and then take the answer seriously. Sometimes the answer has a date in it and you just found a real client. Sometimes the answer is that nothing has to be true, they are watching, and now you both know what this is.

I gave away my Saturdays out of fear

The honest version of why I used to keep those people on my calendar is not service. It was that my calendar behind them was empty.

In a slow stretch every warm body looks like the last one you are going to get. So you keep driving, you keep sending listings, you stay available, and you call it taking care of people. It is fear of loss, and it makes your standards move without you noticing they moved.

The part that keeps it alive is that it works sometimes. You spend eight Saturdays on somebody and one of them eventually buys, and you file that away as proof the patience was right. But you have no idea what those same eight Saturdays would have produced spent on somebody with a date attached to them, because you never ran that version. There is no second set of data. Nobody I have coached or worked alongside has ever built a business out of scarcity, and I did not build mine out of it either. I just spent a while pretending it was generosity.

This is not refusal. It is matching.

Nobody has to get fired here, and nothing gets said unkindly.

You tell them the truth plainly, which is that you will match them to where they are. If they are all in, you are all in: showings this weekend, offers written at ten at night, whatever it takes. If they are half in, you are going to check in once a month, send them the search they can run themselves, and be ready the week something changes.

Most people are relieved to hear it, because most people already know they are not ready and have been feeling vaguely guilty about your Saturdays. What you are doing is not turning them down. You are teaching them what your time is worth, which is also what they will tell their friends about you.

The mistake is not serving the unmotivated buyer. It is serving everybody at the same level regardless of whether anything is going to happen.

And the monthly version is not a brush-off. It is a real service: a saved search they control, a note when something in their range shows up, a call once a month that asks what has changed. Half of those people turn into have-to-move buyers eventually, because life does that to everybody, and when it happens you are the agent who stayed in touch without making them feel managed.

The standards happen before the car, not during it

Three things should be true before you unlock the doors.

They are working with you exclusively and it is in writing. They are a nine out of ten on motivation in their own words, not in your read of them. And they have actually spoken with a lender, not intend to, not have a guy.

Experienced agents skip all three at exactly the moment they should not, which is when the lead arrives warm. A referral from a past client feels like an exemption from the process. A friend of a friend feels rude to qualify. So the standards get run backwards, after the driving is already done and the awkward part is now attached to a relationship.

They are not a filter for strangers. They are the job.

And the motivation number is not something you assess from across the table. You ask for it. On a scale of one to ten, how ready are you to make this move, and then you stop talking. A seven will tell you what is missing if you let the pause sit long enough to be uncomfortable. What is missing is the whole conversation, and you would have driven right past it.

The listing side is the same conversation

An unmotivated seller does not present as an unmotivated seller. They present as a price problem.

The house sits, the feedback is soft, and you start assembling the case for a reduction. The conversation stalls because you are asking somebody to accept a loss they have no reason to accept yet, and the reason is missing because nobody confirmed they were going anywhere.

Take it in order. Realign with the motivation first, then revise the number. Do you still want to move, and what does the move get you. Then, given that, here is what the market is telling us and here is what it will take.

If it turns out they would rather sit than sell at the price the market is paying, that is a legitimate answer. Now you both know what this listing is and you can decide what it deserves. What you cannot do is run a price process on somebody who has not decided to leave.

My job was never to sell the house. My job is to get somebody where they said they wanted to go, and selling the house is how that happens when they actually want to go.

What to run before your next showing

Ten minutes, and you can do it with the list you already have open.

Sort your active buyers into dates and feelings. Write the thing that forces each one to move next to their name. Lease, job, contract, school year. If you cannot write anything, you are looking at a want.

Have the matching conversation with the top two feelings. Say it in one breath: you will be here when it is real, and in the meantime here is what you will do and what you will not. Then hold it.

Write your three standards down before the next lead comes in. Exclusive, nine out of ten, spoken to a lender. Decide them now, because a standard you set while somebody is watching your face is a negotiation and you will lose it.

Next Saturday the car goes out anyway. Four houses, eighty miles, home by two, and the notes get written while it is fresh.

The only thing that changes is who is sitting in the passenger seat, and whether anything in their life is making them go.